4 Gitmo prisoners repatriated to Afghanistan

The US Department of Defense announced that four Afghan detainees who had been held for over a decade at the Guantanamo Bay military prison have been returned to their home country as part of a push to eventually close the detention center.

The men were released to
Afghan authorities after being flown to Kabul aboard a US
military liner, officials said on Saturday. The Afghan government
is not required to further detain the men, and has declared that
the detainees will “soon be reunited with their
families,” reports AP.

A US official has said that the repatriation effort rapidly
shrinking Gitmo prisoners’ ranks will see several more transfers
in the coming weeks. Thirteen detainees have been released in the
last two months, including six men from Syria, Palestine, and
Tunisia who were sent to Uruguay. With this week’s release of the
four Afghans, 132 detainees are left at the internationally
condemned prison complex.

The four men, who had been identified as “low-level
detainees,” had long-since been cleared for transfer but
were held up in the pipeline for years.

At least one of the men, Shawali Khan, had never been charged
with a crime.

"He was sent to Guantanamo on the flimsiest of allegations
that were implausible on their face and never fully
investigated," said J. Wells Dixon, an attorney with the
Center for Constitutional Rights who assisted with Khan's case.
"He never should have been there."

Of those remaining, 64 have been approved for transfer.

At the start of his term, US President Barack Obama had promised
to shut down the notorious prison. However, he has not yet been
able to do to so, in part because of opposition from Congress.

Nonetheless, this week Obama has reiterated his intention to
ultimately shut down the facility.

"The Guantanamo detention facility's continued operation
undermines our national security," he said in a statement
issued on Friday. "We must close it.”

A hunger strike in 2013 attracted even more attention to the
detention facility. Over 200 days, the strike reached its peak in
July 2013, when more than two-thirds of Guantanamo’s 166
prisoners refused food as a way to protest their indefinite
detention. Human rights groups chastised the US for torturing and
force-feeding inmates.